In the middle of what would become a franchise-changing East Coast trip, the Blazers rolled into Madison Square Garden with a nucleus of unprofessional, underperforming quitters who had spent the better part of a lockout-shortened season sabotaging their coach and embarrassing a proud and passionate fan base.

As Wesley Matthews — one of the handful of players who never quit last season — likes to say, it was a “debacle.”

And few games were worse than the Blazers’ visit to New York. In the fifth-most lopsided loss in franchise history, the Blazers were humiliated by the Knicks, falling 121-79 in a spectacle I will never forget. At the end of the pounding, the Knicks rubbed it in the faces of the beleaguered Blazers, tossing alley-oops and heaving deep three-pointers up until the final buzzer.

Near the end of my story breaking down that game, I wrote: “... at some point something has to change — either the results or those in charge.” We all know what happened next.

One day later, owner Paul Allen cleaned house. Coach Nate McMillan was fired. Gerald Wallace and Marcus Camby were traded. The Blazers did everything they could to jettison Raymond Felton, but no one would take him. It was the day that created the rebuilding project that now exists.

Flash forward to Jan. 1, 2013. A new year welcomed a new team and a new outlook. The dysfunction is gone. The hope is back. These Blazers play hard, play with passion, play with flare and play to win. And all of that was evident during a hard-fought 105-100 victory over the Knicks, the second-best team in the Eastern Conference.

The Blazers built a 19-point first-half lead and then held on down the stretch, flashing some “mental toughness” new coach Terry Stotts has been looking for. These Blazers, who have won 8 of 10, are playing better and more mature that anyone expected and, at 16-14, are nipping at the playoffs.

Will it last? Who knows. The bench is still thin. The team is still young. It’s a long season and there’s a lot of basketball ahead.

But at the very least, this much is clear: The culture, the attitude and the hope has changed with this franchise. Stotts looks like a keeper. New GM Neil Olshey hit a home run in his first NBA draft. The bones are in place to build a winner.

Rookie point guard Damian Lillard, with his seductive game and veteran-like savvy, is quickly becoming a star. LaMarcus Aldridge, who has seen it all during his six-plus NBA seasons, is expanding his game. Nicolas Batum has justified that $44 million offseason contract and then some. Matthews, who always seems to be criticized for one thing or another, continues to carve out a niche as a franchise building block.

None of this is news, obviously. We’ve seen it all slowly emerge over the course of this surprising season.

But I thought it was a good time to look to the past, flip the page on that “debacle” and appreciate what we now have: A team that is the polar opposite of the one that rolled through Madison Square Garden one season ago.